Warren Murphy: Judgment Day

"What troubles?" said Remo with a casual shrug.

"The trouble that has been bothering you since you returned."

"No trouble," said Remo, as he dialed the base of the table lamp and waited for the shade to say hello.

CHAPTER FIVE

Chum gave the problem much thought. Indeed, he said, they both had a problem. An emperor's fall, if it should be a fall, was a serious thing. People might start thinking, even though they might not say it, that the House of Sinanju was responsible for the emperor's fall, that this Emperor Smith had hired the House of Sinanju and look, there he is, dead.

But this would not be fair because the House of Sinanju had been hired only to train for Emperor Smith. But would people know that? The problem both Remo and Chiun now faced was explaining that the House of Sinanju had been hired only to train personnel and that if Sinanju had been commissioned to serve fully, which it had not, Smith would be alive and well today, ruling peacefully and sublime.

"That's not exactly the problem, Little Father," said Remo.

Chiun looked puzzled.

"What else could be the problem?"

"I don't know what's happened to Smith. I just believe he has been injured or killed."

"Then why not go to the palace and find out?"

"Because I am under orders never to return to Folcroft where you first trained me. I'm not supposed to be connected with that place. I've never been able to get this through to you. Smith's organization is not supposed to exist."

"Congratulations," said Chiun. He sat in a lotus position on the floor while Remo sat on the couch.

"On what?"

"Once again not getting that through to me. I do not understand. Smith is most inscrutable. No palace guards. No concubines. No servants. No treasures. Ah, the mysteries of the West. Smith was a mad emperor whom the House of Sinanju could not save from his madness. That is it. The world will understand that."

Remo got up from the couch and paced. "Only half a dozen people in the world have ever heard of Sinanju and they don't talk, so that's not our problem," he said.

"Then what is our problem? We will always find work. When the world has no more use for artists or doctors or scientists or philosophers, it will still need good assassins. Do not worry. A crazy Western emperor will not hurt our reputation."

"This is going to be very hard to explain, Little Father. But I love my country. Smith was not my emperor. We both served another emperor and that was the country. If CURE, Smith's organization, still serves this nation, then I wish to continue serving CURE."

"On your back," said Chiun. "Quickly."

Remo dropped to the floor and flattened on his back.

"Take the air to the very essence of yourself. Hold. Hold it. Hold the air and live on your will. Emit the air. Live on your will. Your organs slow now. Your hearts slows. Only your will survives. Now. Snap. The air. Snap the air. In far. Out far. Much air."

Remo felt his very mind bathed in freshness and light. He sat up and smiled.

"Do you feel better now?"

"Yes," said Remo.

"It is a good thing. You were beginning to talk the madness of the mad Emperor Smith."

Remo threw up his hands. "Let me explain it this way, Little Father. If there is a new emperor, I wish to serve him. I'm an American."

"I never held that against you. There are some very nice Americans."

"I will serve this new emperor," Remo said. "I hope you will, too."

Chiun slowly shook his aged head.

"First, what right have you to take the gift of the teachings of Sinanju and squander it? What right do you have to take the years I gave you and cast them at the feet of any unknown?"

"You were paid, Little Father."

"I was paid to teach you killing tricks, not Sinanju as I have taught you. What I gave was a gift from many generations of Masters of Sinanju. Before what you call your ancient Rome, we were. Before that mud swamp barbarian village on the Seine, Paris, we were. Before the island people of Britain, we were. When the Hebrews wandered in the desert, we had a home and we knew the discipline of Sinanju. You have been given Sinanju, not because your emperor's coin, or your country, or any contract your mind can conceive demanded it, but because you, Remo Williams, were a vessel worthy to receive it."

Remo stopped pacing. He stood motionless on the rug. He felt the words come hard and felt strange tears form behind his eyes.

"Me, Little Father. Worthy?"

"For a white man," said Chiun, lest his pupil run amok at such praise and succumb to arrogance, the one impenetrable barrier against wisdom.

"I… I…"

Remo was speechless.

"Secondly," said Chiun, for he too felt things he did not wish to express, "you cannot serve another emperor. No Master of Sinanju serves a succeeding emperor. For this, there are good reasons. One, people might say the Master arranged the death of the first emperor. Secondly, and this you may not understand for many years, for you are not even four decades old yet, but a new emperor buries the sword of his predecessor."

"I don't understand, Chiun."

"A new emperor wants his own power. It does not happen today, but when ancient rulers died, they were often buried with their most trusted and highly placed ministers. This was not as some have come to believe so they could serve him in another world. No, it was because the new emperor or pharaoh or khan, or whatever men wish to call a president or chairman or czar—because truly they are all alike—it is because the new emperor does not wish other powers than his to be present. Today, a new emperor comes to power and the servants of the old emperor retire, which is a different form of death. But in our world, they must die, as was the way in the past. You cannot serve the new emperor because he does not want you around. He wants his own ministers. This I know."

"We don't work like that in America. This isn't the Orient or 1,200 B.C. This is America in the twentieth century."

"And your country is inhabited by human beings?"

"Of course."

"Then your country is the same. You are just not wise enough to perceive what I tell you, because you are a little baby still short of four decades of life."

"You've made my mind up for me," Remo said. "I'm going to Folcroft."

"I will go with you for you carry more than a decade of my life and we have a saying in Sinanju that babies should not wander the streets alone."

"I wonder when your ancestors ever had time for training," said Remo angrily. "You're so damned busy shooting off your mouth with sayings for this and sayings for that. You ought to go on television like that social worker in the funny Western hat."

"I know the one," said the Master of Sinanju. "Kung Fu. The white man whose eyes are made to look normal."

What Remo did not consider, and what many Americans had never conceived, was that America did have royalty. Not bestowed by accident of womb, but by personal accomplishment, by inventing, discovering, creating, or performing.

And a true lord of the nobility of merit spit the blood from his aging mouth, tried to focus eyes that had been filled with tears of torture, and sat up in the lead-lined basement of a hilltop house near Bolinas, California.

He did not know where he was, not even the continent for sure, or even the week or month. He knew his body was covered by painful welts, that his right leg had suffered nerve damage, and that breathing itself was very hard. But as he swallowed the water that felt like razor blades going down his throat, he knew one more very important thing. His adversary had made an incredible blunder. Dr. Harold W. Smith was alive.

He should not have been alive, not at his age, not after the shock to his body. But he had been reared in the Vermont countryside where winters whipped physical hardship upon a young boy who had wanted above all things to be a lawyer, then a judge. In school, when others cheated on exams, Harold Smith covered his paper, even when he sat next to the class bully. As he had tried to explain to the much larger boy, he would be doing him no favor by helping him through school painlessly. The struggle to learn was part of the growing up process, young Harold had said.